The Scent of Disease

Olsson, Mats Joakim Robert; Lundström, Johan N.; Kimball, Bruce A.; Gordon, Amy R.; Karshikoff, Bianka; Hosseini, Nishteman; Sorjonen, Kimmo; Höglund, Caroline Olgart; Solares, Carmen; Soop, Anne; Axelsson, John; Lekander, Mats

doi:10.1177/0956797613515681

Cited by 243 publications

(151 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…First, a particular odor, such as fear odor, is assumed to have a distinctive signature, in the sense that it is comprised of distinctive chemical compounds, similar to what other researchers have demonstrated for gender [74], individuals [74] and disease [19]. Arguably, specific odor compounds related to fear may have become associated with particular situations in which they naturally occur (e.g., fear-inducing contexts such as academic examinations).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Recent evidence provided strong biochemical support for the hypothesis that the odor produced by people who were sick was qualitatively different from a placebo condition, ostensibly refuting the argument that a person’s reaction to sweat produced under particular conditions is simply based on the presence of “more of the same components” [19]. Similar to what has been demonstrated for the scent of disease [19], a qualitatively different odor may be produced rather quickly in the case of fear, facilitated by apocrine sweat that arrives on the skin along with odorless precursor molecules. Enzymes of axillary (armpit) skin bacteria transform these precursor molecules into volatile odoriferous substances [20] that can be sampled with a sniff.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid Stress System Drives Chemical Transfer of Fear from Sender to Receiver

2015

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Humans can register another person’s fear not only with their eyes and ears, but also with their nose. Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to body odors from fearful individuals elicited implicit fear in others. The odor of fearful individuals appears to have a distinctive signature that can be produced relatively rapidly, driven by a physiological mechanism that has remained unexplored in earlier research. The apocrine sweat glands in the armpit that are responsible for chemosignal production contain receptors for adrenalin. We therefore expected that the release of adrenalin through activation of the rapid stress response system (i.e., the sympathetic-adrenal medullary system) is what drives the release of fear sweat, as opposed to activation of the slower stress response system (i.e., hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis). To test this assumption, sweat was sampled while eight participants prepared for a speech. Participants had higher heart rates and produced more armpit sweat in the fast stress condition, compared to baseline and the slow stress condition. Importantly, exposure to sweat from participants in the fast stress condition induced in receivers (N = 31) a simulacrum of the state of the sender, evidenced by the emergence of a fearful facial expression (facial electromyography) and vigilant behavior (i.e., faster classification of emotional facial expressions).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid Stress System Drives Chemical Transfer of Fear from Sender to Receiver

2015

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“…It has recently been demonstrated that odors are involved in social communication between humans where tentative evidence suggests that body odors communicate the age and health status of an individual to others12, as well as emotional state345, thus highlighting the social relevance of chemosignals. Moreover, most social interactions involve the act of drinking or eating where an impaired sense of smell will severely impair one’s experience given that smell is a principal component of the flavor percept when tasting food and drinks6 and an olfactory impairment will severely limit one’s ability to detect rotten or spoiled food7.…”

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confidence: 99%

Olfactory function and the social lives of older adults: a matter of sex

Boesveldt

Yee

McClintock

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Social factors play a critical role in a panoply of health processes, including, as recently demonstrated, olfaction. Here, we investigated sex-dependent differences in the relationship between social lives and ability to identify odors in a large sample of nationally representative older US adults (n = 3005, National Social Life and Aging Project (NSHAP)). Social life was measured by the number of friends and close relatives as well as frequency of socializing. We here confirm the association between social lives and olfactory function and extend the notion by showing specifically that olfactory identification ability is modulated by sex in older adults. The connection between olfactory performance and social lives could reflect social modulation of aging as has been reported for health in general. Future studies are necessary to elucidate the precise mechanisms underlying this association and sex difference.

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“…Factors influencing sweat chemistry include gender (Penn et al, 2007), age (Yamazaki, Hoshino, & Kusuhara, 2010), genetics (Kuhn & Natsch, 2009;Martin et al, 2010), disease (Olsson et al, 2014), diet (Havlicek & Lenochova, 2006), physical activity (Callewaert et al, 2014a), and the bacterial species composition of the skin microbiome (Leyden, McGinley, Hölzle, Labows, & Kligman, 1981).…”

Section: The Production and Perception Of Body Odormentioning

confidence: 99%

The smell of us – crowdsourcing human body odor evaluation

Benony¹,

Cardon²,

Ferré³

et al. 2016

HCj

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Human body odor is produced when sweat-secreted compounds are metabolized by bacteria present on the skin. The resulting volatile mixture is often negatively perceived, motivating the use of personal cosmetic deodorants. Yet body odor may also be positively perceived in some contexts, and is proposed to play a role in sexual attraction, kin identification and social bonding. Because only human smellers can report the hedonic qualities of body odor, their perceptions are a valuable complement to modern GC-MS-based quantitative chemical measurements. Here we present a crowdsourcing framework that engages volunteer smellers to characterize human sweat samples. Our approach seeks to reward both the sweat donor and the smeller with a web-based graphical interface that is informative, interesting, and fun. 300 samples from 87 individual donors were scored by 93 smellers for intensity, pleasantness, and a variety of odor descriptors. Body odor intensity and pleasantness were determined to vary with age, gender, and self-reported deodorant use. Counterintuitively, deodorant use showed no effect on the perceived intensity of body odor, and was associated with a decrease in the perceived pleasantness. From these data, we determine the precision and dynamic range of the volunteer nose as a body odor evaluation instrument. Given the high variability of smeller perceptions, a large-scale crowdsourcing effort may be needed to produce a comprehensive description of body odor perceptions. We discuss the role of learning, creativity and fun in motivating volunteer sweat donors and smellers for such an effort.

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The Scent of Disease

Cited by 243 publications

References 25 publications

Rapid Stress System Drives Chemical Transfer of Fear from Sender to Receiver

Rapid Stress System Drives Chemical Transfer of Fear from Sender to Receiver

Olfactory function and the social lives of older adults: a matter of sex

The smell of us – crowdsourcing human body odor evaluation

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